others-How to use GitHub copilot cli to boost your performance in command line environment?

Mar 12, 2024

1. Overview

The GitHub copilot cli is a command line tool to boost your performance in command line environments. You can chat in command line now!

To use this tool, you should:

Have an active subscription of GitHub Copilot
Have GitHub CLI installed on your computer

Then you can install the GitHub Copilot Cli by following this article.

Before its working on your computer, you must login:

gh auth login

Then you can install GitHub Copilot Cli:

gh extension install github/gh-copilot

To upgrade it, you can :

(base) ➜  gh extension upgrade gh-copilot
[copilot]: already up to date
✓ Successfully upgraded extension

To view all its options, you can:

(base) ➜  ~ gh copilot --help
Your AI command line copilot.

Usage:
  copilot [command]

Examples:

$ gh copilot suggest "Install git"
$ gh copilot explain "traceroute github.com"


Available Commands:
  config      Configure options
  explain     Explain a command
  suggest     Suggest a command

Flags:
  -h, --help      help for copilot
  -v, --version   version for copilot

Use "copilot [command] --help" for more information about a command.
(base) ➜  ~

To change the options of GitHub Copilot Cli, you can:

(base) ➜  ~ gh copilot config

? What would you like to configure?
> Optional Usage Analytics

? Allow GitHub to collect optional usage data to help us improve? This data does not include your queries.
> No

? What would you like to configure?
> Exit

2. Explain commands

As the name shown, the gh copilot explain command can explain the command you provided at details. Here are some examples.

2.1 Explain simple command

(base) ➜  ~ gh copilot explain 'telnet'

Welcome to GitHub Copilot in the CLI!
version 0.5.4-beta (2024-01-04)

I'm powered by AI, so surprises and mistakes are possible. Make sure to verify any generated code or suggestions, and share feedback so that we can learn and improve. For more information, see https://gh.io/gh-copilot-transparency

Explanation:

  telnet is a command-line tool used for interactive communication with remote systems using the Telnet
  protocol. It allows you to establish a TCP/IP connection to a specific remote host and port, and then
  interact with the remote system by sending and receiving text-based data.

(base) ➜  ~

Let’s add some options to it:

(base) ➜  ~ gh copilot explain 'curl -vvv'

Welcome to GitHub Copilot in the CLI!
version 0.5.4-beta (2024-01-04)

I'm powered by AI, so surprises and mistakes are possible. Make sure to verify any generated code or suggestions, and share feedback so that we can learn and improve. For more information, see https://gh.io/gh-copilot-transparency

Explanation:

  • curl is used to issue web requests, e.g. download web pages.
    • -vvv is a flag used to increase the verbosity level of the command,
    providing more detailed information about the request and response.

Good job.

2.2 Explain complicated command

Now let’s add some complicated pipes to the command:

(base) ➜  ~ gh copilot explain

Welcome to GitHub Copilot in the CLI!
version 0.5.4-beta (2024-01-04)

I'm powered by AI, so surprises and mistakes are possible. Make sure to verify any generated code or suggestions, and share feedback so that we can learn and improve. For more information, see https://gh.io/gh-copilot-transparency

? Which command would you like to explain?
> cat xx.csr | base64 | tr -d ‘\n’

Explanation:

  • cat xx.csr prints the contents of the file xx.csr to the standard output.
  • base64 encodes the input data as base64.
  • tr -d '\n' removes any newline characters from the input.

(base) ➜  ~

Now give it a very complicated command:

(base) ➜  ~ gh copilot explain

Welcome to GitHub Copilot in the CLI!
version 0.5.4-beta (2024-01-04)

I'm powered by AI, so surprises and mistakes are possible. Make sure to verify any generated code or suggestions, and share feedback so that we can learn and improve. For more information, see https://gh.io/gh-copilot-transparency

? Which command would you like to explain?
>  `find . -type f -name "*.conf" -exec grep -wH "aaa" {} +`

Explanation:

  • find . searches for files and directories starting from the current
  directory.
    • -type f specifies that we are only interested in files, not directories.
    • -name "*.conf" filters the search to files with the extension .conf.
    • -exec grep -wH "aaa" {} + executes the grep command on each file found.
      • grep -wH "aaa" searches for the exact word "aaa" in the file.
        • -w matches whole words only.
        • -H prints the file name along with the matching line.
      • {} represents the file name that find finds.
      • + indicates the end of the -exec command and that multiple file names
      can be passed to grep at once.

Very good.

3. Suggest commands

Apart from explaining commands, GitHub Copilot Cli can also suggest commands to do some jobs. Here are some examples:

3.1 Suggest simple commands

(base) ➜  ~ gh copilot suggest

Welcome to GitHub Copilot in the CLI!
version 0.5.4-beta (2024-01-04)

I'm powered by AI, so surprises and mistakes are possible. Make sure to verify any generated code or suggestions, and share feedback so that we can learn and improve. For more information, see https://gh.io/gh-copilot-transparency

? What kind of command can I help you with?
> generic shell command

? What would you like the shell command to do?
> how to compress files as tar.gz

Suggestion:

  tar -czvf archive.tar.gz files/

? Select an option  [Use arrows to move, type to filter]
> Copy command to clipboard
  Explain command
  Revise command
  Rate response
  Exit

Another one:

(base) ➜  ~ gh copilot suggest

Welcome to GitHub Copilot in the CLI!
version 0.5.4-beta (2024-01-04)

I'm powered by AI, so surprises and mistakes are possible. Make sure to verify any generated code or suggestions, and share feedback so that we can learn and improve. For more information, see https://gh.io/gh-copilot-transparency

? What kind of command can I help you with?
> generic shell command

? What would you like the shell command to do?
> How to list files using ls and sort them by name

Suggestion:

  ls | sort

? Select an option  [Use arrows to move, type to filter]
> Copy command to clipboard
  Explain command
  Revise command
  Rate response
  Exit

3.2 Suggest complicated commands

Now , let’s add some complication:

(base) ➜  ~ gh copilot suggest

Welcome to GitHub Copilot in the CLI!
version 0.5.4-beta (2024-01-04)

I'm powered by AI, so surprises and mistakes are possible. Make sure to verify any generated code or suggestions, and share feedback so that we can learn and improve. For more information, see https://gh.io/gh-copilot-transparency

? What kind of command can I help you with?
> generic shell command

? What would you like the shell command to do?
> How to replace some text in a file using sed

Suggestion:

  sed 's/old_text/new_text/g' file.txt

Another one:

(base) ➜  ~ gh copilot suggest

Welcome to GitHub Copilot in the CLI!
version 0.5.4-beta (2024-01-04)

I'm powered by AI, so surprises and mistakes are possible. Make sure to verify any generated code or suggestions, and share feedback so that we can learn and improve. For more information, see https://gh.io/gh-copilot-transparency

? What kind of command can I help you with?
> generic shell command

? What would you like the shell command to do?
> how to copy local directory files recursively to remote machine and the port is not 22

Suggestion:

  rsync -avz -e "ssh -p <port>" /path/to/local/directory user@remote:/path/to/remote/directory

Good job.

3.3 Suggest git commands

GitHub Copilot Cli can also suggest git commands, here are some examples:

(base) ➜  ~ gh copilot suggest

Welcome to GitHub Copilot in the CLI!
version 0.5.4-beta (2024-01-04)

I'm powered by AI, so surprises and mistakes are possible. Make sure to verify any generated code or suggestions, and share feedback so that we can learn and improve. For more information, see https://gh.io/gh-copilot-transparency

? What kind of command can I help you with?
> git command

? What would you like the git command to do?
> How to add local git repository to remote repo?

Suggestion:

  git remote add origin <remote_repository_url>

Very good.

4. Conclusion

To summarize, the GitHub Copilot Cli is a command-line ‘AI’ tool which can help you to quickly solve command line problems. But it lacks some chat-history capability – that is it can only suggest or explain one command at a time, if you want more, you must open another command. It’s a good try in command line I think.